Minority Broadcast Ownership Update
Posted December 13th, 2007 by Joe Torres
Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is just days away from voting on a new ownership rule that would allow for greater consolidation and further jeopardize the future of minority ownership.
Chairman Martin is seeking to lift the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban. This would allow a newspaper to purchase a TV station ranked outside the top 4 in the 20 largest markets in the country. Martin’s plan has been criticized by civil rights and public interest groups for its lack of transparency and for not addressing the crisis in minority broadcast ownership.
Martin called his proposal a modest change to the ownership rules. But his proposal is anything but modest. Free Press examined Martin’s proposal in a recent report and found that it contains a giant loophole that would allow newspapers to easily receive a waiver from the FCC in every market. This would place minority ownership in greater jeopardy.
Nearly half of all minority-owned TV stations operate in the top 20 markets and all are ranked outside of the top four. This would reduce opportunities for people of color to own broadcast stations in our nation’s largest markets. In addition, 90 percent of all minority-owned stations are ranked outside the top four.
The FCC is seeking to relax our the newspaper-broadcast ownership rule even though minority TV ownership continues its decline. Free Press released Out of the Picture 2007 on Nov. 27, an updated study on minority TV station ownership. The study found that minority TV ownership declined by 8.5 percent this past year, including a 60 percent drop in the number of African-American owners.
NCLR President Janet Murguia criticized Martin for rushing to issuing new rules “regardless of the certain harm it will cause to the already fragile state of minority media ownership.”
Martin received a grilling from members of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Technology and the Internet during a Dec. 5 hearing to examine his ownership plan. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) challenged Martin over the commission’s flaw studies that failed to deal with diversity issues, including minority ownership. Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) also took the chairman to task for failing to deal with the crisis in minority ownership. Journalist Juan Gonzalez, former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, also called on Congress to prevent Martin from implementing new rules.
Meanwhile, on Dec. 4, the Senate Commerce Committee approved the Media Ownership Act of 2007 (S. 2332), which would prevent the FCC from considering new ownership rules before dealing with the issues of localism and minority ownership. The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). It currently has 20 co-sponsors, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-N.Y.).
A Congressional Research Service report released Dec. 5 that examined the FCC’s ownership studies, outlined the failure of the commission to conduct an accurate count on minority ownership. The report said:
- Several gaps remain in data collection, however. Most significantly the databases on minority and female ownership of broadcast and telecommunications properties are incomplete and inaccurate, and statistical analysis based on those data would not be reliable.
- It is possible that the Third Circuit would not approve any FCC media ownership rule until the Commission has developed a minority ownership database of sufficient accuracy to allow for reliable testing of the impact of the rules on minority ownership.
As the FCC once again moves to relax media ownership rules, it has become clear that the agency has turned its back on people of color. Over and over, we have heard from local communities that the media is a life-and-death issue. We have less than one week to tell the FCC and Congress that we won’t stand for being pushed off the airwaves and out of the picture.
Take action here: http://action.freepress.net/campaign/ownership
Tell your friends here: http://action.freepress.net/campaign/ownership/forward
Take a public stand here: http://www.stopbigmedia.com/wall
